Kirby Middle Principal Marian Williams and Achievement School District Superintendent Sharon Griffin tour the school on Wednesday. The school is allowing Shelby County Schools to use space for Kirby High School students who were displaced after rats invaded their building.(Photo11: Jennifer Pignolet/The Commercial Appeal)Buy Photo

But still, when she was first asked about rearranging her entire school a month into the year to accommodate another 400 students, she paused.

"I did have that initial moment of, 'How are we going to make this work?'" Williams said.

In one week, the school moved its 400 middle school students, whose classrooms were spread throughout the building, into the main wing of the school.

That allowed Shelby County Schools to move in displaced 11th- and 12th-grade students from Kirby High, uprooted from their own school around the corner due to a rat infestation. They moved into their own wing on the north side of the middle school on Monday.

The middle and high school students will be sharing a campus for the foreseeable future — perhaps the entire semester — while SCS works to remove any trace of rodents.

SCS, ASD collaborate

SCS owns the Kirby Middle building its students will use temporarily. However, the district no longer operates the middle school. The state's Achievement School District took over Kirby Middle three years ago, outsourcing its operation to Green Dot Public Schools.

As a result, the sharing of space required collaboration across two different school districts and a charter organization.

The agreement meant students didn't have to leave their neighborhood and could start back to school quickly after weeks of uncertainty. It also marks a significant, and perhaps rare, instance of cooperation between the state and the local school district, who have often battled over students and facilities.

ASD Superintendent Sharon Griffin, who took the job over the summer after decades with SCS and the former Memphis City Schools, pledged her relationships with the county leaders would bring about more cooperation.

"I want to make sure that everybody in our city knows that it is the responsibility of every single person to support the schools and the betterment of our city," she said Wednesday during a tour of Kirby Middle.

Green Dot Tennessee Executive Director Megan Quaile was the first to reach out to SCS about possible use of Kirby Middle.

Many of the high school students have siblings at Kirby Middle, she said, easing the strain on families. But the age groups are still kept apart.

"We wanted to make sure families both at the high school and the middle school knew there would be some separation," she said.

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A hallway at Kirby Middle separates the space between the middle and high school students. Shelby County Schools and Achievement School District students are working under one roof for the next few months.(Photo11: Jennifer Pignolet/The Commercial Appeal)

The high school students have their own entrance, which includes metal detectors. SCS sent two school resource officers normally stationed at Kirby High to the middle school. A security officer guards the hallway between the middle and high school wings.

The two groups also have different start and end times during the day.

'Hard to tell they're even here'

Williams, the principal, said all has gone smoothly in the first three days.

"It's hard to tell they're even here," she said.

Students in the ninth and 10th grades at Kirby High relocated to another charter, the DuBois School of Leadership and Public Policy.

That school is under SCS, however, and is run by Willie Herenton, the former Memphis City Schools superintendent and Memphis mayor.

When the high school students moved into DuBois, however, the middle school students who normally attend there were uprooted to nearby Cummings Street Missionary Baptist Church.

SCS Chief of Communications Natalia Powers said that was a concern for the district, to have a domino effect of displacement. But Herenton's staff was able to make it work, Powers said.

For both Kirby Middle and DuBois, SCS is paying for costs like utilities and cleaning facilities. The agreement with Green Dot is for $22,000 a month. A formal agreement is still in the works for the DuBois school, Powers said, and will likely come before the school board for a vote.

The priority, she said, was to keep students in the Hickory Hill neighborhood. The back-up plans included Hickory Ridge Mall, which would have taken several weeks to ready, and South Side High, a closed SCS school that was almost a 40-minute drive from Kirby High.

"We're really just thankful to both the partners at Green Dot and DuBois for really just opening their doors and going above and beyond to help the students at Kirby High School," Powers said. "I think we all agree this was something that was helping our entire community."

Reach Jennifer Pignolet at jennifer.pignolet@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @JenPignolet.